When it rains, it pours. And snows, and floods.

So Katelyn got this water play table for Christmas. Which will be lots of fun in the summertime, but I thought I had a great idea for putting it to use now. I poured in about half of a Costco bag of rice, and some measuring cups and little toy animals. Katelyn and Jackson played in it, then we swept up some rice that fell out, and went to pick up Olivia. After playing in the puddles (as you already heard about), they got cleaned up, then they all started playing with the rice again while I did some things in the other room. (May have involved some blogging of the rain pictures). Then they told me to come see the snow they had made. Half a bag of Costco rice spread all over the living room. And they were skiing in it. The vent cover is pulled out in the picture because I'm trying to figure out how to get a big pile of rice out of the heating vent. Not sure why my older two thought this was a good idea. But then, it was my idea to fill that thing with rice in the first place. And leave them alone with it. No wonder I heard so much laughing in there.

Later that night . . .
We try to do movie night on Fridays. During the movie, Jackson asked for a snack. When I went to get it, I walked into a puddle - or a river - of water filling our laundry room, going through the kitchen, into the dining room and heading for the living room. There was a dumb little toy in the big sink that our washer drains into (not a good set up, by the way), and plugged the drain. So all the soapy water from the "super" size load of laundry was pouring onto the floor. We grabbed towels and buckets, Olivia cried to see her shoes in the mess, Katelyn cried because she had slipped on the wet floor trying to get to me, and Jackson cried because everyone else was doing it. In the middle of it, John got paged to go to the operating room. We had most of the water under control, the kids went back to Kung Fu Panda, and I washed lots of towels (with no toy in the drain this time). We had to move the washer, dryer, bookshelf, get under the stove, under the fridge, storage shelves, etc. but luckily it didn't get into the carpet. And there was the bonus of finding things under the stove and washer, like a few crayons, a missing spoon, old M&M's in a dust pile that Katelyn was sad to see go in the trash, a shrivelled up carrot . . .